After 61 years of setting ’em up and knocking ’em down, Covina Bowl is shutting down. Sunday is its last day.
Pop-culture entertainer Charles Phoenix organized a farewell event there last weekend, a “Last Strike Party,” for midcentury mavens to pay their respects.
• Photos: Party is one of Covina Bowl’s last hurrahs
As a fan of the 50-lane bowling center, I attended. It was at this time last year that I wrote about its 60th anniversary when another cultural anthropologist, Chris Nichols, organized an ad-hoc party.
I think they both secretly did it for an excuse to wear one of their classic bowling shirts. Phoenix, an Ontario native who now lives in Los Angeles, wore a bowling jacket with Whitman County Shrine Club stitched on the back and the name Ed Kilpatrick on the front.
When I arrived, he was chatting with his fans and posing for photos with them under the towering sign in the cracked parking lot. They included women in vintage dresses, a man in a fez and another man in an Abe Lincoln outfit, complete with stovepipe hat. Now that’s retro.
I went inside to grab a lane and bowl two last games solo. There’s not much to say about the results except that I managed each time, just barely, to break 100. My skills are slipping, although I blame the deep-blue “cosmic bowling” lighting.
Covina Bowl dates to the 1950s, bowling’s renaissance period, and in its heyday was open 24 hours. It had meeting rooms for luncheons, banquets and civic functions, a coffee shop, a lounge, a beauty salon and a supervised play room.
The design, by the firm of Powers, Daly and DeRosa, has elements from Egypt, as absurd as that sounds, but the result was a fun spot to visit. Phoenix’s invitation emphasized the pyramid-style entrance, green terrazzo floor, decorative tiles and rock walls.
The bowling alley was busy on a Saturday night, but I’ve been there when most lanes were open. I can see how there might be better uses for a half-block of real estate than a fading bowling center.
“I felt like I had to do it,” Phoenix told me of the no-host party. “It was my chance to see it, and rather than come here alone, I decided to call out the troops. … It’s nice to see so many people turn out.”
Few of them were bowling, though, just like at Nichols’ party a year ago. Like Nichols, Phoenix confided that he’s not much of a bowler. He asked what was in the shoebox under my arm and seemed surprised by my answer: bowling shoes.
RC in AAA
A spread on budget eateries — “great fare at bargain prices” — in the March-April Westways magazine has Rancho Cucamonga’s Combine Kitchen as one of the 10 picks. Singled out are its banh mi sandwiches, garlic toast with mushrooms and poached egg, deviled egg salad sandwich and kimchi rice bowl.
‘Getting Started’
To remind you, yours truly will be speaking from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Upland’s Carnegie Building, 123 E. D St. Admission is free. You can help me celebrate, or at least mark, 20 years at the Bulletin. If you can’t attend or are too shy to ask a question, submit your burning query by email and perhaps it can be included in a column I’m planning for later this week.
As if an event in the City of Gracious Living weren’t high-toned enough, March 14 will see me speaking to Claremont’s University Club at 11:30 a.m. in the Hughes Center, 1700 Danbury Road. You’ll have to pay $15 to hear me, I’m afraid, but you do get lunch.
Online only
On my blog: In a case of mistaken identity, I am thanked for participating in a whiskey tasting in the Netherlands; Ontario is named one of the “30 Best Neighborhoods in America”; I write about the six books I read in February, all of them with the word “man” in the title; and I eat a couple of meals at Wicked Cow, a new burger and beer spot in Upland. Visit my blog, man, at insidesocal.com/davidallen.
Valley vignette
The Back Abbey, a popular Claremont gastropub, has been closed Sundays since its opening in 2008, a reflection of owner John Solana’s beliefs. After years of requests and lost business, he finally relented Feb. 12. His restaurant is now open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays. Most folks on the restaurant’s Facebook page were happy. Coco Owchar wrote: “Thank you, Jesus! Perfect food for Sunday after church! My sons will be so happy!”
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, happily. Contact dallen@scng.com or 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
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